


I Remember Falling

by MageBetrayal



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 22:56:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16628051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MageBetrayal/pseuds/MageBetrayal
Summary: After the fall of Haven, the tension between Lothwen Lavellan and Cassandra Pentaghast... changes.





	I Remember Falling

**Author's Note:**

> This is a preview. The whole thing's currently hovering around 50k, and I'm nearly finished, but I need to apply a little pressure to myself by posting something here! In the meantime, say hi at magebetrayal.tumblr.com

LAVELLAN

I remember… falling. Again. Not like the first time, falling out into the world, but down: down into the deep dark below Haven, home. Home in the way that everywhere becomes home the longer I stay, the oftener I return. Home in the way I defend it. I’ve only ever defended people; no place ever asked for my defense or my dominion. A place is something to pass through, to flee, to touch and to hold but never to be held by. But Haven holds me. Bereft of all but its own corpse it takes me into its mouth like a mother toad takes her eggs and engulfs me, swallows hard, down to the bowels. Even in death—for death has come for me, Dirthamen’s twin ravens foretell the coming of his shadow, Falon’Din, friend of the dead, oh Merciful One, oh friend of mine—even in death, I feel one with this place. Is this what it’s like to be _from_ somewhere? To be _of_ somewhere? Lothwen of Lavellan, Lavellan of the Dalish, The Herald of Andraste, I have only ever been _of_ others. But here, as I lay dying in its depths, I am of Haven, and Haven holds me like a broken bird.

Is this how we felt when we lost Arlathan? Is this how we felt when we lost the Dales? Can I feel this way for a human place? Is it a human place if it is also mine?

Doesn’t matter now, I suppose.

I can hear the ravens circling. I am calm and sorrowful in the way only a great failure can conjure. I crave rest. The future is over and matters not. I am alone. I am ready. _In uthenera na revas_ : in death is freedom.

_Cassandra, are you ready?_

Little wingbeats, right to left— _caw!_ —I open my eyes and realize I have not been breathing and suck in air fast and panicked— _caw!_ —zinging pain, cracked, broken—my chest, inflating, breath burgeoning against my ribs like a frothing Mabari gnawing at the kennel—“ _Ah_ —” A new pain under an old scar, a bad bone—more than one?

_Caw!_

The tunnels under Haven, dotted with deep mushroom and a single lonely vein of lyrium, a dim blue glow. My own veins running thick and cold, I lift my skull from a rubble cradle, I move slower than I ever have, even in stealth. Rising, rising… _I remember… falling…_ the raven swoops so close I can feel it flap against the back of my head and I jerk upright—“ _Augh!_ ”—the pain in my ribs is so thick and tangible it has a color. It pulses. I can almost see it. The mark on my left hand flares to life and illuminates the cavern, and I squint, even marvel a little, clutching my chest with my other arm, bursting with anguish and grief. It’s still there. I still have it. He _could not_ take it from me. I defended this alone, even if by accident, even if I couldn’t defend the rest of me, the rest of mine, if anything was ever mine at all.

My vision clears. That bird is feral with fear, slapping itself with the leather thong tied to its foot as it darts from wall to wall, casting jerking demon shadows on the stone in the greenish light of my hand. I look away, and down: the other raven is still tangled in the wooden cage they both crashed in.

I roll over onto my hip and elbow, then onto my hands and knees, then stand. I don’t know if the power of the mark is pulling me upright or if I’ve caught my second wind, but when I finally let go of my left side my hand comes away wet with blood. My head spins at the sight of it.

The bird struggles in the collapsed cage. I could tie something to its leg. I could use blood and a stick to write, but I have no paper—perhaps a shred of my tunic? A scale from my armor? Would anyone even recognize it? I wonder where they’re trained to return to. They’re Inquisition birds, surely a message would find its way into Inquisition hands. Perhaps a scout on the lake in the Hinterlands would untie the little metal chip and think, _Aha, the Herald of Andraste wears mail, she must be buried alive under the town she destroyed._

Everyone wears mail. I can’t even bring myself to sigh.

My body trembles with shock, fatigue, and hunger. How long have I been unconscious? Long enough to become ravenous. I am a Dalish hunter, I could eat that bird.

It is easy to train a messenger raven. They are not rarities. You hatch it in the place you want it to remember, then bring it along to send messages back. It homes in on the place where it was born, no matter what, whether by magic or magnetism, it always, always remembers where you stole it from.

A memory rising, rising in my addled brain, the voice of the Keeper, in the voice she reserved for rash youths longing for the yoke and bridle of adulthood: “What does the God of Secrets teach you about family? About loyalty?” I, on my back, sharing no pain and shedding no tears, watching her speak to me upside-down, bent over my child’s face, the needle poised above my brow, inked and bloody. If I answer I will cry, and she will put the needle away, and I will not become a woman, only ashamed. I don’t even have an answer. I don’t know.

_Dirthamen wandered aimlessly until he came across two ravens. “You are lost, and soon you will fade,” the raven named Fear said to Dirthamen._

_“Your brother has abandoned you. He no longer loves you,” said the other, named Deceit._

_“I am not lost, and Falon’Din has not abandoned me,” replied Dirthamen. He subdued the ravens and bade them carry him to Falon’Din._

I free the second bird. It shoots up out of the cage, and together, both ravens hurtle down the tunnel and away, immediately, screeching. I slowly, slowly follow. If those birds can find an exit, so can I.

Redcliffe, the Storm Coast, far-off Val Royeaux—wherever they’re going, I hope they get there.

I wish I had a magnet in my nose that could point me toward the Inquisition. _Elgar’nan,_ I would never find the _aravel_ I tumbled out of as a babe.

Wind whistles across the mouth of the tunnel, a ghostly howl. There were many tunnels beneath Haven, but I know this one from one end only, previously boarded up near where we assembled the trebuchets. The landscape on the other side is unrecognizable. White. Dark. Vast and unmoving, unchanging. I shuffle across the topmost skin of the avalanche to a fire in the distance—a campfire? Did they wait for me?

_Cassandra, are you ready?_

It isn’t a campfire. It’s a wagon, shattered to pieces, _on_ fire. Did they have time to load wagons and run? Were they all crushed? Do I tread ten feet above their corpses in the snow?

I have no choice but to keep moving.

Wherever they went, I hope they got there.


End file.
